I Crave This Chile Crisp Tofu
This happens all the time to me — maybe it happens to you? — I come across a recipe on New York Times Cooking while I am searching for something else, and I just really have to have it for dinner that night.
The recipe in question this time: roasted tofu and green beans made magical with chile crisp, the clumpy, crunchy, allium-flecked chile oil that can take something plain (whether it's steamed white rice or vanilla ice cream) and make it thrum. This is a really good dinner you can make with astonishing ease. I keep chile crisp in stock at home, and if you don't already, I think you should — spoon it over olive oil-fried eggs, swirl it into fettuccine Alfredo, use it as a marinade for chicken cutlets or tuck it in dumplings (and dip those dumplings in it, too).
Speaking of dumplings: It's our first ever Dumpling Week! Just in time for Lunar New Year, we have recipes and videos for five new plump, juicy, chewy, crisp (and even sweet) dumplings, which is how I learned that Hetty Lui McKinnon, one of our beloved writers, has a tattoo of her mother's hands folding dumplings.
Alert! Do you live in the Bay Area, Los Angeles or Boston? I'm coming your way to talk cooking and 'Easy Weeknight Dinners,' our book of fast recipes for busy people. Come see me with Eric Kim and Melissa Clark in Boston on Feb. 3, with Eric and Genevieve Ko in Downtown Los Angeles on Feb. 9 and with Melissa again in San Francisco on Feb. 10.
What are you making? Do you have any stop-in-your-tracks, drop-everything-and-cook recipes from Cooking? Email me at dearemily@nytimes.com, and you may turn up in a future newsletter.
Turkey chili; cod and kimchi stew; perfect buttermilk pancakes.
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